Prospect: A Year in the Park

Marsh mellow

I've always wanted to check out the Salt Marsh Nature Center in Marine Park, the unlikely green stretch set down in the middle of Avenue U (how do you say that, "Avenoo-yoo"?) Most of their nature path through the wetlands turned out to be closed since last year (a fact announced by no signage at all in their handsome visitors' center, although there is an overgrown sign to this effect at the end of the trail. Apparently the path is set to re-open next month, although there's no signage about that, either.) I simply set out and found a locked gate after perhaps 50 yards or so.

Even the short section of path that is open gave a nice taste of this wild edge of New York City. Above: Phragmites (the invasive plant causing havoc in wetlands) frame an osprey platform (I think) and beyond that, the Marine Parkway Bridge to the Rockaways. At low tide, you can apparently still make out the foundations of a 400-year-old Dutch grist mill.

 A few visitors had come to pray for the Holy Days and cast bread into the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The muffled soundtrack for this bucolic scene: choppers en route to Floyd Bennet Field and traffic along Avenue Yoo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't see much bird life beyond mallards and robins, but the Monarchs were spectacular.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So was this Mystery Bug...ID, anyone?

[Yes, indeed! The amazing Flatbush Gardener tells all about the Ailanthus Webworm Moth and its family in a meticulously researched post here.]

 

Nearby, an unlucky lacewing vibrated in a web.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the park's handsome visitors' center, a pair of dioramas candidly address the area's issues like pollution and dumping. A diamondback terrapin swims in a tank and glass cases display pelts, skulls and other critter-abilia. The "Urban Ranger" puttering at a desk was curiously passive and reticent about the trail being closed, however, seeming content that "they" had not bothered to put up any signs about it in the center itself. No one should ever mistake "Urban Rangers" for real U.S. Park Rangers.  (Just try going to the Visitors' Center at Gateway National Park to see the difference in professionalism.)

GERRITSEN BEACHED

I did finally make it all the way to the shore at the very end of Gerritsen Avenue, where the wetlands give way to open water. A dead-end street terminates in a small, impromptu beach; some lucky homeowner in this remote and insular-seeming neighborhood has an amazing bit of urban oceanfront all to themselves. Well, almost; I walked the beach, and as I left, a young lady was setting up a lawn chair to spend the last afternoon of Summer, 2012 sunbathing.

 

 

The only wildlife I observed along the shore was this smiling starfish. Only a week or so ago, however, this very stretch of placid beachlet lay in the path of a tornado; see the link provided by an astute friend in the comments below.

When the robins come

Are robins becoming more numerous? Every spring, there seem to be more of them. This guy was taking a violent bath in the park's lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freshly storm-soaked and chilly, Prospect Park at sunset was subdued and lightly populated. Spring green, a thousand shades of it, is everywhere, along with splashes of delicate white.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's surprising how many trees glow red in their first tender foliage. This maple on Nellie's Lawn was one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The baby leaves on this oak blushed, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost home, in the Parade Grounds, I happened on this sidewalk memorial. A quick Googling revealed that Tamon Robinson was a beloved employee in a Fort Greene "Connecticut Muffin" coffee shop where, curiously, we just stopped in last Sunday after catching a movie at BAM. We had wondered about the oaktag memorial poster in the window; apparently the young man was run down by an NYPD squad car last week under mysterious circumstances and later died. Not surprisingly, his grieving family is seeking answers. How he came to be mourned among the ballfields of Flatbush, or by whom, I do not know.

 

If I shouldn't be alive

When the Robins come,

Give the one in Red Cravat,

A Memorial crumb –

If I couldn't thank you,

Being fast asleep,

You will know I'm trying

With my Granite lip!                                      

                            --Emily Dickinson

Bipolar weekend

 

This was yesterday afternoon, the Lilac Collection, Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Tonight, listening to cold rain lashing the windows and gusts howling, it seems long ago.

Every year, it is my stated mission to inhale lilacs from every single bush, allegedly to detect nuances of scent among different varieties. (For example, white ones have a very light scent; blue ones are incense-like.) In truth, I am just drugging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Cranford Rose Garden, a few bushes were already crowned in glory. Roses in April, really?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Our native wildflowers in the Northeast are delicate debutantes, all in white. Left to right: Solomon's seal, false Solomon's seal, and trillium. The shady floor of the Native Flora Garden was carpeted with them. Trillium is also called wakerobin, and there were plenty of wide-awake robins marching around in the undergrowth.

We observed sadly that Streamreach, our beloved Ent near the BBG's wandering waterway, who shaded many games of "float stuff downstream" during Daughter's childhood summers, had sustained two mighty wounds since we last paid him homage. But he's standing, half an Ent still nobler than another tree whole, and I hope tonight's brutal winds do him no further harm.

This whole experiment of green

Gotcha! A week of late-May-like weather had everything bolting into bloom, but after a freezing night, some blossoms, like these magnolias on Wellhouse Drive, appeared to regret the hard-partying spring break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my own garden, the hyacinths pumped out their heavy blooms seemingly overnight, then dropped face-forward into the dirt. In the park, the daffodils seemed impervious to extremes, nodding in the chilly late-afternoon sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Songs of red-wing blackbirds richocheted around the lake shore, along with those of doves, cardinals, robins, geese, gulls, and a helicopter. Yet a deep stillness seemed to envelop the little Wellhouse, a building that always feels haunted to me. Perhaps it's because a vast well actually lies beneath here, its outline traced by a sunken circle in the ground.

 

 

 

 

 

A little madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King

But God be with the Clown,

Who ponders this tremendous scene—

This whole experiment of green,

As if it were his own!

—Emily Dickinson, "The Single Hound," XXXVIII

 

Death and resurrection, park-style

I wish people would stop saying, "Winter? What winter?" as if it were something to be missed. Daffodil buds are plumped to bursting along Prospect Park Southwest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even at 56 degrees, there was no mistaking it for spring. A stiff breeze blew scuttling leaves in eddies along the Center Drive. Near the Quaker Cemetery, and fresh from Ash Wednesday ("remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return"), I peered inside for a glimpse of mortality.

 

But a radiant forsythia distracted me from the rows of plain tombstones. So did the evidence of debauchery just outside the historic cemetery's perimeter fence: a scattering of beer cans, lighters and condoms. At least they weren't festooned on the grave sites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, that's a better offering for the deceased: a cluster of snowdrops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Throughout the park, the number of recently hewn trees is shocking. Glades have turned to clearings; the sharp smell of sawdust is in the air. A year of storms has exacted its toll, but this log's frosting of exuberant lichens was a reminder that decay is transformation.

 

 

A day-old Valentine...

...is this lovely image from the Brooklyn Historical Society Blog, "Lover's Lane" in Prospect Park circa 1887. It looks to me like one of the many paths that lead into the Midwood. Sadly, those paths today are known for activities that bear only scant resemblance to love, as the noble members of the Prospect Park Littermob can attest.

Mostly, I'm loving this shot for its reminder (even in black and white) that green leafy days shot through with filtered sun do lie ahead. This is the bleached-bone time of year, and although the warm winter has left a little more green in the landscape, it will be months before the canopy re-appears to cloak lovers and other strangers.

 

Pretty poison

Aw, what's that spunky plant willing to brave this week's balmy January weather and push up through the leaf litter? Who's giving us some welcome, hopeful green in a preview of spring? Yes...it's poison ivy, staking its claim just inside the Center Drive and dreaming of summer's bare ankles and toes to come. Sigh. goutweed! Thanks to one of the park's landscape management experts for pointing out that goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria) "is NOT a native plant, but has been very difficult for us to control. Poison ivy would have reddish new leaves, but as far as I have seen is not out in leaf yet."  Three leaves, leave it be, anyway! To learn more about goutweed's nasty habits, go here. (The stuff does look lovely in summer, though, with its snowy canopy of flowers, and according to the Plant Conservation Alliance, it is used in parts of Russia as a salad green; there should be enough locavorious vegans in Brooklyn, not to mention Russians, to get the job done.)

  

Subtler touch of green was found in the moss on these roots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Very Large Array of dumpsters along Center Drive is unnerving, but I did like the hues of these cans.

 

Thanks to my friend and coach Artist Karen for dragging me back to the park for a long walk after a fortnight of near-paralysis in front of my computer. Without her prodding, I would have extended that funk by another day.

 

 

 

 

 

And I would have missed Tuesday's Blurry Bird of the Day: a Downy Woodpecker, frantically swaying and pecking on a phragmites. I found this ludicrous; c'mon, bird, there are still plenty of trees left in Prospect Park even after the latest round of forest surgery! But according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

The active little Downy Woodpecker is a familiar sight at backyard feeders and in parks and woodlots, where it joins flocks of chickadees and nuthatches, barely outsizing them. An often acrobatic forager, this black-and-white woodpecker is at home on tiny branches or balancing on slender plant galls, sycamore seed balls, and suet feeders.

That's what I aspire to be..."an often acrobatic forager"...if I can only get out of the house.

Super Saturday

Last weekend saw folks donning capes to fly around the balmy Long Meadow...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and doffing jackets to relish the warm sunshine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three little girls took a cookie break beneath the benign gaze of James T. Stranahan, "father of Prospect Park." Their innocent enjoyment was just what he worked so hard for...although he would have been puzzled by their strange headgear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone flopped in the shadow of the little shuttered guard booth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on the park's main drive, there was palpable delight whether on foot or on wheels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It didn't feel much like a week after New Year's Eve...and no one was sorry.

In search of Happy Light in 2012

This winter, I'm throwing the book at SAD; I even bought a Verilux "HappyLight"®, before which I slumped in the frigid pre-dawn this morning. But I'm also determined to use Prospect Park as my full-spectrum light therapy...and to recommit to the daily park visits that prompted this chronicle three years ago. New Year's Day was spent in the HappyDark of the movies and a German restaurant, but on Monday afternoon I dragged Spouse to see the sun's last rays gild the lake.

 

 

 

 

 

And this morning, I braved the bitter wind to see the sun peer over the treeline behind the Long Meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dogs were already out in force, jubilant in the bitter air. (Which reminds me: My limited edition of Park Bark: At Play with the Dogs of Brooklyn, a photo celebration of the park's dogs and their owners, is getting close to sold out! Thanks to all who ordered a copy for a holiday present, and if you'd like to get in an order (Valentine's Day approacheth), by all means go here and let me know if you'd like a dedication written on the flyleaf.)

 

 

 

 

 

WACKY TREE OF THE DAY

Monday afternoon, I spied what looked like a bunch of lime-colored, corrugated softballs in the leaves, under a thicket of thorny branches. One clung to the tree overhead. I struggled through the thorns and pocketed one to identify later. As I suspected, it was an Osage orange (Maclura pomifera). I've heard of these in the park but never found one before.

 

Here are some cool facts about Osage oranges:

* They are related to the mulberry, and are not citruses. (The fruits supposedly smell a little orangey, but mine didn't.)

* Few animals except horses eat the fleshy fruit (technically called a drupe), which is inedible and mildly poisonous to humans--but an extinct ground sloth may once have relished it as a slothalicious treat. Some folks also claim bug-repellent properties for the fruit, which exudes a milky sap (as I discovered when I sliced it open).

* Its nicknames include "hedge apple" and "horse apple." Grown as a hedge, it predated barbed wire as a way to fence in cattle.

* The tree's wood has been prized by bow-makers dating back to the Comanches for its flexibility and strength; early French settlers called it bois d'arc, or "bow wood."

* Merriwether Lewis sent cuttings of Osage orange to Thomas Jefferson.

Happy New Year...see you in the park!

Solstice lookout

Sunset, the day of the solstice; the sun was vanishing behind the buildings of Windsor Terrace by 3:30 p.m. I wanted, Druid-like, to capture its last rays, so I headed up Lookout Hill, the tallest point in Prospect Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lookout Hill is one of those spots in the park that one is warned against visiting alone, but when leafless, it seems exposed as well as remote. Condom wrappers and other nasty bits attest to its seclusion, but even in waning daylight I felt fairly safe with the occasional jogger...and an intrepid mom and kids who were using the hill as a family Stairmaster.

 

 

 

 

 

The flattish, circular top of Lookout Hill would be a great place for a Wiccan ceremony to worship the distant sun, but for a while I was completely alone. To the south, I could see...good grief, was that the Coney Island parachute jump? It was. Turning a few degress to my left, I looked down on the lake and away to the erstwhile fields of Flatbush where we live.

 

 

 

 

 

As I left the park, the festive decor glowed in the shadows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BARKING MAD THANKS!

...to all who have ordered a copy of Park Bark: At Play with the Dogs of Brooklyn, my photo homage book to the canines of Prospect Park and their owners.   Go here for easy PayPal ordering...and remember, Valentine's Day is coming up fast!